Category: News

The best selling car in the segment (Dzire) is also India’s best selling car this year (Jan-July)! Maruti’s Dzire has out-beaten the next best Alto by quite a margin! Dzire sold 1,66,088 units between Jan’18-July’18 v/s 1,46,761 units of Alto within the same time.

Honda’s Amaze has emerged as the biggest launch of 2018! The Compact Sedan has worked wonders for the Japanese OEM and recorded >10k volumes just within 3 months of launch. Infact, Amaze is the first model in Honda Cars India’s history to cross 10k sales mark in a month. Amaze also contributed to ~51% of Honda’s overall sales in July’18!

Amaze has posed a real challenge to Dzire and has now bought Maruti on its toes. Maruti is now on a defensive mode and has already initiated a counter attack to avoid losing it’s sales to Amaze by:

Ensuring a steady supply and reduce the waiting period. Dzire had commanded a waiting period of 3-6 months since its launch. However, Maruti has planned production of extra batches of Dzire to allow immediate availability of the variants.

Dzire has already initiated discounts to woo price-conscious buyers. Honda had surprised all by announcing a breakthrough price for Amaze – In some variants Amaze was almost Rs.35k cheaper than the counterpart Dzire (Amaze VX Diesel v/s Dzire Zdi+). Without Amaze, no one would have even thought about discounts on a Dzire!

Recent Dzire Paper Ad – Also see that discounts upto Rs.22,100 being offered!

In short, the race to be the most ‘Dzire’able car in the segment has got hotter and Maruti has now found a real competition in Amaze:

The C-segment Sedan segment has also seen a major upswing – Ciaz has fallen down to the bottom of the list! Yes, Maruti was rationalizing the stocks of the outgoing Ciaz and was making way for the Facelift model (slated to be launched on 20th Aug). In the process, City has gained the throne and ranked 1st in the segment. City was ahead of the next best selling car in the segment (Verna) by almost 350 units.

City tops the chart with 3,709 units! However, the model has degrown 24% vis-a-vis the same period last year.

The overall segment degrew 26% owing to the low volumes of the outgoing Ciaz. The numbers are surely bound to bounce back in August.

Yaris has been a big setback for Toyota. With a average of 2,500 units/mth planned initially; the model dropped to 1,400 volumes just within 4 months of its launch. The pricing and the perceived value package has worked against the model.

The Auto Industry had a tough July’18 owing to inauspicious period in various parts of the country (particularly south had Aashada in Karnataka & AP, Karkidakam in Kerala & Aadi in TN). The period is similar to Shraadh in Northern part of the country. The passenger vehicle sales degrew 2.8% in July’18 compared to same period last year. The last year base was also high as the market had jumped post GST implementation in July 2017.

As always, the OEMs with New Launches survived the month and posted a positive growth – the likes of Hyundai, Honda & Tata had a positive YoY growth due to New Creta, New Amaze & Nexon contribution to the respective OEMs sales.

Maruti’s Market Share grew even stronger at 53.3% which was a healthy 1.2% MS growth over previous July.

The highest Market Share growth was registered by Honda Cars and its MS jumped to 1.2% owing to the stupendous response for its Newly launched Amaze. As a matter of fact, Amaze sold 10,180 units in July’18 which is the highest volume posted by any Honda model in a month till date!

Honda now ranks THIRD, overtaking the mighty homegrown heroes (Mahindra & Tata). The race for No.3 spot is now the fiercest and all 3 OEMs (Honda, M&M, Tata) fare neck-to-neck.

Tata slips to No.5 position and stands below Mahindra. However, the difference between the two OEMs was meager 231 units.

Toyota’s bet in the form of Yaris failed and thus impacted the Japanese OEMs dream to gain volumes succumbed. Toyota’s YoY degrowth was at a massive 23%.

Maruti slowly makes an inroad into the Top 3 (Q1 FY18 it was ranked 4th). As usual, Dzire helps Maruti gain foothold in exports as well! Maruti exported 2715 units of Dzire v/s 147 units in previous FY. Baleno emerges to be the No.1 Exported model from Maruti’s stable – An impressive 8,069 units were exported in the first 3 months of this FY.

GM continues to make stable progress in terms of exports. It was able to produce 20,563 units for exports in Q1 FY19 – which means an average of ~6,850 units / month. This is much higher than what GM used to sell in Indian domestic market!

Top 25 Exported Models –

General Motors, which had exited the Indian market last year has overtaken Ford with the compact hatchback Beat. Chevrolet Beat now stands as the No.1 exported model from India with 20,543 units shipped in Q1 FY19, and is marginally up from Ford’s Ecosport which has been the Top Exported model since a pretty long time.

GM is currently the fifth largest car exporter from India, contributing to 11% of the country’s exports. Beat is very successful in markets like Mexico and accounts for 62% of the Latin American country’s ‘A’ segment. Apart from fully built car exports, General Motors ships about 30 containers per week of components from India. Last FY, General Motors exported about 25,000 engines from India as well.

Ford India cited that exports dipped due to the preparation of the launch of New Freestyle. We also expect model change for Figo & Aspire led to drop in exports.

– $4.7 billion investment announced towards battery production with CATL

– BMW iX3 crossover to be built exclusively in China with BMW Brilliance Automotive

– Mini electric to be made in Oxford (UK) and China with Great Wall Motor

BMW have decided to make the iX3 and the Mini electric in China and made a massive investment towards the development and production of their future electric vehicles. The manufacturer has been sourcing batteries from Samsung but a new deal with China’s CATL might change that. CATL are China’s largest battery manufacturer and they’re also setting up a plant in Europe to cater to the European carmakers.

According to Electrek.co, The German automaker’s investment was earlier believed to have been $1.16 billion towards CATL’s cause. But, BMW have confirmed that the deal is worth $4.7 billion. This will help grow CATL’s production capacity, which currently stands at 17.5 GWh and will soon be at 24 GWh.

The iX3 was unveiled only a few months ago while the Mini electric concept was revealed almost a year ago in 2017. BMW’s joint venture in China, BMW Brilliance Automotive (BBA) will commence production of the iX3 crossover in 2020. The made-in-China Mini electric will come out of BMW’s 50:50 joint venture with Great Wall Motor. The two manufacturers haven’t revealed a timeline for production but the Mini electric will start rolling out of BMW’s Oxford plant next year. It is also backed by the Chinese and the German governments which shall enable BMW to build over half a million vehicles in China next year; and exclusive production rights for the BMW iX3 electric crossover SUV.

“Today’s signing represents a new chapter in the success story of our BMW Brilliance Automotive joint venture. Our agreement sets a long-term framework for our future in China – a future involving continued investment, further growth and a clear commitment to the development and production of electric vehicles. The next chapter of our cooperation has the potential to go beyond our existing motto – in China, for China. The all-electric BMW iX3, produced by BBA from 2020, will find customers around the world.

The strategic partnership (with Great Wall Motor) is a clear win-win, enabling us to contribute to China’s ambitious plans to ramp-up new energy vehicles and reduce emissions in the mobility sector,”

Chinese Automobile market has clearly gained great importance from the BMW Group among other automakers, as the company reportedly sold almost 560,000 vehicles there last year alone, making it the single largest market for the Bavarian Luxury carmaker. BMW already has a battery factory in China, hence full-scale electric vehicle production is a logical next step.

(The article is written by Mahesh Yadav. He is a car enthusiast and always look forward to new tech. He loves it when a great blend of the two shows up.)